Division Winner: General
For more than six years, Delano Bat Company has produced high-quality, custom wooden bats for baseball players of all ages. The team also learned from their young customers and their parents that while they wanted to maintain the wooden bat tradition, they wished the bats had the performance of modern materials.
Amateur baseball players primarily use bats that meet the BBCOR—batted ball coefficient of restitution standard, determined by measuring the change in a ball’s speed before and after it hits a bat. The BBCOR standard measurement of 0.500 is meant to reduce the “trampoline effect” that allows a ball to spring off the bat at higher speeds, making it easier for players to hit a ball further with less effort. However, many of these newer bats, often made of aluminum, composite, or hybrid materials (a mix of aluminum and composite), compromise on lasting performance, durability, break-in, and feel.
This gave the Delano Bat Co. team an idea: What if they could revolutionize and revitalize the baseball bat market by fusing the tradition of wood with the performance of modern materials?
The Delano Bat Co. was reimagined in 2022, and its flagship bat, The Original Gamer, was born, delivering the maximum allowed BBCOR performance of 0.500 with the look, sound, and feel of wood.
The differentiator is the FZN Composite Core technology, the company’s patented bat design and manufacturing process. Each bat is made of high-tech carbon fiber, space-age polymers, a roughly 2.6-inch barrel, and wood. In addition to peak BBCOR performance, the bat requires no break-in and maintains performance throughout its use, unlike other modern-technology bats. “Breaking into a market long dominated by major baseball brands required us to prove not just that we belonged but that our technology could redefine performance expectations,” says founder and CEO Logan Benda.
The Original Gamer, currently in the prototype stage, has been certified by Washington State University and the National Collegiate Athletic Association in 32- and 33-inch lengths, and is approved by the NCAA and National Federation of State High School Associations for play in BBCOR and wood-composite tournaments. Additionally, the bat’s performance has been validated in elite player trials and by the No. 1 bat influencer YouTube channel, The Baseball Bat Bros.
“These milestones demonstrate that our bat isn’t simply another composite or alloy—it represents a new category altogether,” Benda says.
As the company prepares to enter the $500 million baseball bat market, the next few months will be about transitioning The Original Gamer from certified prototype to scaled commercialization. This includes completing the remaining BBCOR certifications across all bat lengths to open full market availability, raising additional capital to expand and automate manufacturing capacity, and engaging retail partnerships with stores like Scheels and Dick’s Sporting Goods. Delano Bat Co. will also sell direct to customers through its website, delanobats.com, starting this fall.
The company doesn’t plan to stop with The Original Gamer; it has broadened its vision to include a product portfolio of United States Specialty Sports Association, USA Baseball, and softball bats, as well as baseball equipment and accessories, “positioning Delano as a disruptive American bat manufacturer across multiple adjacent markets,” Benda says.
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